Bahrain's Shiite Muslim majority made slight gains in closely watched parliamentary elections over the weekend despite a widespread crackdown on activists and boycott calls by some groups. Election results released Sunday showed that the Wefaq Party, representing the mostly Shiite opposition, won 18 of 40 seats, a victory in every race it fielded a candidate and one more position than it won in the last election. Thirteen pro-government candidates also were elected. No candidate won a majority among the remaining seats, including some being contested by other parties challenging the government.

On the second day of voting in the U.S. for Iraq's election, scores of expatriates continued to arrive Saturday at polling stations across the country to cast their ballots. In Skokie and in nearby Rosemont, voters chatted as they waited in line, bundled against the cold and eager to participate in their native country's first competitive election in 50 years. About 1,000 people showed up to vote in suburban Chicago on Friday, election officials said.

Despite threats by rebel nomads, Niger held its first open election in 32 years Saturday, a referendum on a constitution that would allow multi-party presidential and legislative balloting next year. A national democracy conference ousted President Ali Saibou in November, 1991, and put transitional Prime Minister Amadou Cheiffou in power. Multi-party elections have already been postponed three times.

BEIRUT - Opposition activists across Syria on Monday boycotted parliamentary elections they dismissed as illegitimate, and instead called for a general strike. The Syrian government, on the other hand, hailed the multiparty elections, Syria's first, as marking a historic step toward comprehensive political reform in a country that has been ruled by the same family and political party for more than four decades. In February, Syrians voted for a new constitution that abolished the one-party system long controlled by the Baath Party.

Democracy dawned with a flourish across South Africa on Tuesday as hospital patients, pensioners, the disabled and other "special voters" flocked to this country's first all-race polls in unexpectedly high numbers and remarkably good spirits. The opening day of the historic three-day election for the post-apartheid government was marred by widespread confusion and hundreds of complaints of logistic problems and technical glitches at urban and rural polling stations.

Homemaker Alaa Abed Mehdi had no intention of risking her life to vote Sunday. Early-morning explosions only strengthened that resolve. Then Mehdi, 27, looked out her window and saw history passing by -- in groups of twos and threes. Braving threats of suicide attacks and mortar strikes, scores of Iraqis -- many wearing their best suits and dresses -- filed by Mehdi's house in a quiet procession toward the heavily guarded polling center down the street. "It was an amazing scene," Mehdi said.

Egyptians poured back to polling stations Wednesday to take part in a second round of voting that is expected to boost Islamist parties' control over the soon-to-be-formed parliament. Many of the nine governorates involved in round two included rural and conservative areas where Islamist parties have long enjoyed strong support. Though no preliminary results were announced late Wednesday, many predicted that Islamist parties would consolidate their gains from the first round.

Braving the threat of violence, voters began lining up this morning to cast their ballots in an election seen as crucial to whether this turbulent country returns to the path of democratic rule or lurches deeper into instability. Polling stations opened at 8 a.m. across Pakistan, the culmination of a weeks-long campaign marked by the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, suicide bombings by militants and allegations of widespread electoral irregularities.

Against all odds, South Africans of all races will begin to go to the polls today to liberate themselves from their own bitter history. After more than three centuries of white rule, four decades of apartheid and four years of bloodshed, the overwhelming black majority will cast ballots for the first time, today through Thursday, to elect a government that has pledged to repudiate racism and seek social and economic justice through multi-party democracy.

Amador Gonzalez Jr. had already dusted, swept out and reorganized most of his garage when he found out Thursday that it could not be used as a polling place this year. The county Registrar of Voters called him to arrange to pick up the cardboard polling booths already delivered to his house. The reason he's out after a longtime tradition is this year he's a candidate for the Yorba Linda Water Board.